Two courts, one Becker and of 'serves' in both!

Raju Korti
For someone nicknamed "Boom Boom" in his heyday for his imperious serves, this is one serve that Boris Becker will not be proud of but will have to serve it anyway. The tennis sensation who strode the Wimbledon like a colossus at a time when current sensations Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were just toddlers, has been served with a two-and-half-year jail stretch by a UK court after being found guilty of violating the Insolvency Laws. The blonde who basked in the glory of kissing his golden Wimbledon trophy at just 17, declared bankruptcy while he owed his creditors Pounds 50 million. For a former Number One with six Grand Slam titles, this is a slam that is not grand by any stretch of imagination.

Becker's tennis career is stuff folklores are made of. I clearly recall watching on my Black and White TV the unseeded 17-year-old, hands raised, before an awe-struck crowd kissing the golden Wimbledon trophy as the youngest ever achiever. It was a dream beginning for any sportsman and Becker showed in the times to come that his rip-roaring success was not a flash in the pan as he went on to annex one Grand Slam after the another in his rising trajectory. But what went up also came down as the vagary of Murphy's Law caught up with him.

Becker is an interesting case study of how people who court blinding success in their career also get overshadowed by a turbulent private life and financial troubles. Having made a fortune out of his swashbuckling talent, his downfall was as protracted as his rise was rapid. And to think of it, becoming a tennis professional was the last thing on his mind. Destiny took a somersault for the charismatic man who hurtled to chaos from a grand standing that he enjoyed in the UK as one of its favourite citizens.

The legal code admits that Law is blind because it goes by the merits of the case and is essentially indiscriminate in nature. Its presumption that lawmakers are fair to all the people all the time is more hypothetical makes sense prima facie but reality often ignores the social upshots that often get relegated. I am aware that this is a highly subjective and therefore debatable issue but that only underscores the need for applying Law with due considerations. In Becker's case it is not just fall from the grace but hitting the abyss of public humiliation. 

From whatever I have gathered, there doesn't seem to be much outcry over Becker's sentence, something that would have made a subject of raging debate in India which erupts into frenzy when celebrities are mired in legal cases.  Conventionally, public sympathy goes with them purely on the emotional quotient as they are generally viewed as the "victims". In his home country of Germany, the media has reacted a little harshly to his punishment. That is understandable as Becker chose to become a British citizen on the premise that "he enjoyed no privacy in Germany and its citizens thought as if they were entitled to him." In the Indian mindset, this emotional crush would have seen a situation to the contrary where the celebrity would feel entitled to his country instead.

It is a paradox -- as remarkable as his career -- that Becker doesn't find much sympathy in a country who he chose to live in because people moved on with small pleasantries and were not overbearing. He now has to decided in his conventional wisdom whether that serves him right or maybe not. History is replete with examples where stars the sporting arena (among others), have had an extra run riding on public support and sympathy when they should have either been punished or faded away from the scene. Remember how Kapil Dev struggled to beat Richard Hadlee's (then) record of 431 wickets at the generosity of the cricketing board, how the likes of Hansie Cronje, Steve Smith and David Warner garnered huge public sympathy when the Law went against them for their acts of commisions and omissions to quote just a few instances. It is fascinating that the Law which owes its origin to social expediencies makes no concession for public beneficience. Some might believe the comparisons unwarranted but Law and Propriety are blind in every sense of the word.

If Becker has broken the Law, he deserves to be punished as matter of truth but a man who has brought so much glory to his foster country at the cost of his own doting countrymen of birth, also deserves some leniency. Law is blind, so it caught up with him. The British media should probe him whether he still stands by his old views about his citizenship when his meadowed presence in his chosen country  has invited more ignominy than the ardor of where he took his roots.

If I may exercise my quotabulary: Becker served one court, the other served him. Both served justice and ironically, Becker has served as a mascot of both.

Running with the hair and hunting with the scissors

Raju Korti
I am generally self-effacing but it is never too late to pat oneself on the back. It was more than four decades ago that I realized I had a special talent with the scissors. I am not talking of the one that I used so prodigiously as an editor in the four decades that followed. Cutting fluff and cholesterol from bloated news stories was worth its sadistic pleasure when I got murderous looks from the reporters the next day. But the one I am referring to here lay dormant in me as I discovered later.

Better than a barber!

Keeping manes was a fashion in my college days. I had acquired one more out of neglect than out of fashion. But laid low by an illness, my hair had decided that it would take its own course. My mother, always so old fashioned, tried all tricks in the book to drive me to the nearest saloon and get a decent hair cut. I dodged all of them until she started calling me a sloth bear.

Loathe to sit head bowed down while the barber sheared my hair mercilessly, I decided to use the scissors at home to crop and discipline my rampant hair. Since Maths and Physics happened to be my choice subjects, the knowledge about slopes, gradient, parabolas and curvature came in handy. I didn't know I had done a neat job of it until my friends asked me how I managed to go to a saloon when I was supposed to have been convalescing at home. Excited by the new found me, I would make it a point to tell my close relatives, especially the senior ones, that they could hire my services for free. They would laugh it off.

My first opportunity came sooner than expected when an old relative discharged after long hospitalization came home with hair strands obscenely sticking out of his nose and ears, face a wasteland of thatched hair and eyebrows looking like a sidewalk lined up on either side by tall grass. It took me almost two hours to trim his facial fuzz. More than him I was pleased with my own performance. Thereafter I did many such jobs, each one turning out better than the earlier. I had a gut feeling that there were many who were keen to use my sccisor-ean skills but inhibitions probably kept them back.

I sharpened those skills perforce in the last two years when the pandemic kept the "nhai" or hair stylist as some would prefer to call, out of business and drove people to self help. I cut down the burden over my friends in the neighbourhood. They all thanked me profusely but it didn't occur to any of them that I deserved some compensation in the light of the situation if not for the labour. And to think of it, professional barbers charge Rs 200 or much more. 

Last week, barbers in Mumbai jacked up their prices by Rs 50. For the first time my penurious condition didn't bring a scowl on my face. It looked clean in spite of them and their silly banter. In any case, you are only as good or as bad as your last hair cut. Mine was about a fortnight ago. The pic is proof that I have done it well and it didn't cost me a dime.

Jaanee, hum apni hajaamat khud karte hain!

A few thoughts about the crisis & emergency in Sri Lanka

Raju Korti
In 2009 the Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who then was the Defence Secretary, had made out a case before the international media that everything is a legitimate target if it is not within the safe zone of the government. Now that he has imposed an internal emergency in the crisis-ridden island, his statement can be safely interpreted as the safe zone of the government actually means his personal comfort zone.

For some time now, the neighbouring island nation has been reeling under the worst ever economic crisis that has triggered a spate of violent protests. After the ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamils in the mid-eighties, the nation seems to have returned to anarchy. The present crisis hurtle it back to those days except that the nature of crisis is different.

Rajapaksa felt the heat when he found the violent public protests that demanded his immediate resignation, had gotten too close for comfort. Sri Lanka is currently experiencing its worst economic crisis in history. With long lines for fuel, cooking gas, essentials in short supply and long hours of power cuts people have reached their tether. Rajapaksa, finding his throne under threat, has taken the predictable route most politicians do when their asses are on fire. He has washed his hands off the crisis saying it was not of his making. The country's economic fortunes depend majorly on tourism revenue and inward remittances are plummeting by the day.

Rajapaksa has a fair history of riding rough shod over country's democratic systems. Assuming the presidential office hasn't helped him get rid of the army uniform he wore in the past. He is not known to believe much in media freedom and has often threatened it of reprisals and has also been accused of corruption in defence procurement. When I met his elder brother and Prime Minister Mahindra Rajapaksa in 2006 in Mumbai, I recall how he had outlined his plans to get the younger brother into Lanka's political mainstream.

The Sri Lankan President cannot deny his role in the crisis. His decision to introduce massive tax cuts in late 2019 led to a sharp drop in the government revenue further compounded by the Covid pandemic. I see some similarities between the modus operandi and thought process of late Indira Gandhi and the younger Rajapaksa. By imposing an emergency to perpetuate his rule, he has taken a leaf out of what Indira did in 1975. The Congress government in India in those times is known to have indulged in blatant currency printing to offset economic deficit. Rajapaksa has taken the same route and with unsustainable borrowings, has thrown the country into a debt crisis with a possibility of sovereign default.  

With the security forces given a free hand to put down public protests, the Sri Lankan government is asking for bigger trouble as such measures of retribution never work in the longer run. The crisis has its frills as the Lankan government has chosen to be magnanimous towards Ukrainian and Russian tourists by giving them free visa extensions. They are now stuck in the country, cut off from funds after American sanctions on international payment networks. It is difficult to believe the levels of stupidity governments get to in crises of this magnitude.

To me that's government inspite of the people.